Getting deep about deepfakes

Make Me Smart May 20, 2024 Transcript

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Kimberly Adams 

All right. I think we can actually do the show now. Hello everyone, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. Kai is out today and making her Make Me Smart debut is Marketplace’s Lily Jamali. You might also recognize her voice from Marketplace Tech and our Decoding Democracy series.

Lily Jamali 

Don’t talk me up too much there, Kimberly. Hey everyone, good to be here.

Kimberly Adams

I have to. I have to.

Lily Jamali

The check is in the mail.

Kimberly Adams 

Lily and I were actually recording just a little bit earlier today our latest episode of Decoding Democracy, which I hope you all will check out. It is about myths and disinformation and how it is affecting elections and many other things in our society. But today, we are going to do some news and some smiles. Let’s start with the news. What caught your attention, Lily?

Lily Jamali 

Yeah, on this Monday. This one is from Bloomberg, which reports that Argentina’s President Javier Milei plans to meet with Mark Zuckerberg and other executives in Silicon Valley in the coming days. Some quick background on Mileo. Very interesting guy. He was elected as president of Argentina last year. He is a libertarian, who Kimberly, if you recall, his big pitch was to dollarize Argentina, which is dealing with hyperinflation right now. He wants to replace the peso there with the US dollar. Well, along the way, he has apparently forged a lot of relationships in the valley, including with Elon Musk. Both of them were actually at the Milken conference here in LA a couple of weeks ago. And now he’s doing the rounds in Silicon Valley meeting with Zuckerberg, and reps from Apple, OpenAI, and Google. Any guesses as to why Kimberly. Do you want to take a stab at this?

Kimberly Adams 

I’m paranoid. I’m not even going to try. I don’t know.

Lily Jamali 

Okay, well, so Bloomberg writes, because I’ve been trying to figure this out, too, actually. Bloomberg writes that he is seeking investments to turn Argentina into an artificial intelligence hub. And when I read that, at first, I thought, okay, maybe he wants to set up some outposts for these companies or expand them. Maybe he wants to commune you know, cultivate more of a technology community there. But then I read this part of the article, which says: “Officials are convinced Argentina has comparative advantages: large tracts open for development, cold weather, top notch human capital, and now, a business friendly government.” And the cold weather part was really the tip off for me because I used to report in Canada for a couple of years. And they had this big issue with data centers like moving there and forced because of the weather, it’s easier to cool them down. And then they were like, hey, we don’t like this so much. So, reading between the lines, this sounds less about developing a local tech ecosystem in Argentina and a lot more about building those data centers, which are a huge part, as we’ve been talking about on Marketplace Tech of making AI a reality.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting how this plays out in different parts of the world. When I went to my hiking trip in Bhutan, at one point, we’re trekking through the mountains, and I started hearing this humming noise and I was like, what is that? Is this some local wildlife or something? And the guide was like, no, there’s a crypto mining farm over there.

Lily Jamali 

Oh, my. In Bhutan, you’re kidding me?

Kimberly Adams

In Bhutan.

Lily Jamali

Isn’t that the happiest place on Earth? That’s what they say.

Kimberly Adams 

So, they say. Yeah. And then you know, you could just see it in the valley because they have a lot of hydroelectricity there, and they just set up shop. And, you know, you could hear it from a distance in this peaceful sort of tropical jungle or whatever. And, yeah the temperature and the access to electricity, and you know, how permissive the government is all of those things matter.

Lily Jamali 

That’s incredible. I am always intrigued. I mean, I’ve been in and out of tech covering it over the last decade. Aways intrigued still about the power and the place that Silicon Valley bigwigs hold on the world stage, whether it’s Elon Musk and Starlink. You know, here’s a guy who can basically decide if a country like Ukraine can stay connected to the internet, as so much of their infrastructure gets destroyed. And then with Zuckerberg, I was thinking about this event that I covered in Menlo Park at Facebook then. Then Facebook headquarters, now Meta. And he was hosting a town hall with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And he was so excited. I mean, he even had his parents, Mark Zuckerberg did, in the audience for this. And it was just sort of like wow, you know, I know you have your thing that you’re doing. You want to connect everyone to the internet, everyone around the world, but it’s like, you know, you’re dealing with political forces that you get the sense that this person doesn’t fully grasp the ramifications of a lot of these decisions that are being made. And then, you know, fast forward a few years, you see the Wall Street Journal reporting that, you know, there’s a top Facebook executive in India supporting Modi. Despite the company’s pledge to stay neutral, you start to realize, you know, if you thought content moderation was bad here, it’s a lot worse abroad. And there’s actually a Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, who wrote about this in his book, “Broken Code,” which we covered on our show Marketplace Tech, where, you know, Facebook was offering assistance to candidates in India, including Modi, with their social media presence. So, you could kind of collect these different nuggets. The bigger picture you see Silicon Valley shapes American foreign policy, whether we like it or not, and whether these people are qualified or not.

Kimberly Adams 

Right. It’s not exactly like Mark Zuckerberg has been trained as a diplomat, or, you know, and if we think about what we consider to be, you know, air, quote, American values, you know, however, while we live up to them, you know, in terms of free speech, and you know, rights of minorities and things like that. How does that translate via business in different parts of the world? But you’ve set me up well for my news item, which is a story in Wired about India also, and how India’s election, which is, you know, going on right now, is so full of AI and deep fakes and things like this, and I loved the headline. The headline is, “Indian voters are being bombarded with millions of deep fakes, political candidates approved.” “India’s elections are a glimpse of the AI-driven future of democracy. Politicians are using audio and video deep fakes of themselves to reach voters — who may have no idea that they’ve been talking to a clone.” And so, you know, if you go down in this article, they’re talking about how some of these people you know, there’s just so many people in this election. So, the world’s largest democracy. “Close to a billion Indians are eligible to vote as part of the country’s general election, and deepfakes could play a decisive, and potentially divisive, role. India’s political parties have exploited AI to warp reality through cheap audio fakes, propaganda images, and AI parodies. But while the global discourse on deepfakes often focuses on misinformation, disinformation, and other social harms, many Indian politicians are using the technology for a different purpose: voter outreach. Across the ideological spectrum, they’re relying on AI to help them navigate the nation’s 22 official languages and thousands of regional dialects, and to deliver personalized messages in far-flung communities.” And I thought this was so interesting because you and I talked about this on Decoding Democracy, like how do you decide what’s an okay deepfake? When is it alright to use a deepfake or AI manipulation in politics? And, you know, we were talking about the Biden robocall, or the fake Biden robocall, I should say, that was a big deal in the primaries and how, you know, this was actively misinformation. This was someone taking a politician’s voice to try to discourage people from voting. But what if it had been the Biden campaign trying to improve its voter outreach, again, within communities where folks only speak Spanish or Cantonese or something like that? Who’s to say that that’s bad?

Lily Jamali 

And I need to say that, Kimberly, if I recall, we have different takes on this. Maybe I’ve evolved.

Kimberly Adams

What is your take? I forgot.

Lily Jamali

My take is, this bothers me, the deliberate use of AI deep fakes and campaigns. I get the whole point about outreach, and you know, you have all these languages in India and regional dialects. You want to reach people where they are and get deep into these communities. However, you know, first of all, there’s a lot of money riding on this now. This has become a cottage industry there. So, you have you know, tens upon tens of billions of dollars as a business opportunity for this, which Wired touches on but, you know, the bigger picture of the deliberate use of these AI deep fakes. I think it conditions people to accept this. You know, even as we are still dealing with that day illusion of malicious stuff happening in this space, that’s what bugs me about it. And I think that, you know, the platforms, social media platforms just aren’t there yet. Maybe they never will be, but they’re certainly not there now in terms of being able to catch all of these harmful bits of content dismiss this misleading content, and then we saw that in India recently when there was a deepfake there of a Bollywood actor. He was made to look like he was endorsing the opposition party to Narendra Modi, the Congress Party there. And it wasn’t true. You know, he didn’t ever say those things. And in you know, you see how the platforms missed it. And so, how many people got the initial message, and then how many people saw the correction? Probably far fewer, right?

Kimberly Adams 

Far fewer. And, you know, I’m kind of on the fence because I can see the good. I can see the bad. The platforms definitely need to do a better job of labeling it, but they’re obviously behind. But I also wonder, and I’m speaking specifically to the US context here, if the ability to do this almost diminishes the imperative for campaigns to make sure that they’re making meaningful connections within those underrepresented communities. So, prior to this technology, if you really wanted outreach in the Spanish speaking community, you needed to go out there and do your best to make sure that you had people who were bridges to that community, advocating for you, right? In people’s own language. And now, if you can just get a computer to do it for you, what’s going to happen to that outreach? If they can get around sort of those bridges into different communities? And I think we’re going to see this play out in the next couple months and see exactly what it does mean.

Lily Jamali 

It’s a great point. And I think, you know, I totally see what you’re saying there. We don’t want to discourage campaigns from doing that important outreach. Maybe this is a tool. And you know, maybe these systems get better, but it just feels like we’re not there yet. You know what I mean?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, yeah. All right. Let’s switch over to some smiles. Okay, Lily, what’d you find?

Lily Jamali 

All right, well, let me first caveat what I’m about to say with this. It was very hard finding a good news story. If you look at the mainstream outlets that I generally look at, not a lot of positive news out there. So, I finally googled it and came across this thing called The Good News Network. Is that a total cop out, Kimberly?

Kimberly Adams 

I have used them many times. No shame in that game.

Lily Jamali 

So, they’re legit?

Kimberly Adams

I hope so.

Lily Jamali

I was kind of worried because the story that I brought along; I don’t know if it’s real. It’s a poll of 2000 adults, which found 43% believed filmmaking has never been as good as it was in the 1980s. Again, is this source credible? I don’t know. Do I want to talk about movies from the 1980s? Always. So, we’re going to roll with it. The people who commissioned this survey this thing called Lottoland found that Dirty Dancing, Back to the Future. I’m going to get fired for this, aren’t I? and ET were named the best 80s movies of the decade. Solid choices. I don’t have any complaints about those. Top Gun and Die Hard were also up there. Here’s where they lose me though. I scan this list. It is a long list. When Harry Met Sally is number 27, which to me is a crime. It belongs in the top 10 in my view. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off number 30. I feel like that one should have been higher, but you can’t please everyone, right?

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, Kai would be very upset by that. He loves that movie. Is the The Princess Bride on here? That’s another favorite movie.

Lily Jamali

It is. It is.

Kimberly Adams

Oh, it’s 40 at the very bottom of the list. Wow. Ah, interesting. I do like the high placement of The Goonies. Appreciate that. And I saw Gremlins on there. Bright light, bright light.

Lily Jamali 

That one was scary. I still have nightmares about that one from watching that at the age of five or whatever. You know, what’s kind of funny is on Netflix. I am a known procrastinator. And so, whenever I go on there, I see a lot of random 80s movies on there like, stuff I haven’t seen before. There’s one with Robert Redford and Debra Winger called Legal Eagles. And I was like, I’ll just watch 10 minutes. Two hours later I cannot believe I watched this totally mediocre 80s movie from start to finish.

Kimberly Adams 

You should go up and look up this movie called, I think it’s called defend your life or something like that. And this movie Defending Your Life, I’m looking it up. Defending Your Life. Yeah. Oh no, that was 1991, but you know the hair is very 80s and it’s basically these two people dying in the afterlife. You have to go to court to defend how you lived your life to determine whether you’re going to go to heaven or hell or get reborn or whatever, and it’s pretty fun.

Lily Jamali

Oh my god, that is so US in the 1990s right there.

Kimberly Adams

I’m entertained because I clicked on the source link for Lottoland. And it says, “thank you for visiting Lottoland! Currently, we’re not allowed to accept players from the United States.” So, it’s a European betting site, which I love.

Lily Jamali 

If you never hear from me again on Marketplace, it’s because of this Make Me Smile segment.

Kimberly Adams 

You know what? Sometimes it’s grim. We got to stretch things. We got to stretch things. Well, I got mine from the New York Times, which is its own kind of cop out because it’s a big news organization. But it was a lovely story. The headline: “63 years later, the first Black man trained as an astronaut goes to space.” “Edward Dwight was among the first pilots the United States was training to send send to space in 1961, but he was passed over. On Sunday, he finally made it on a Blue Origin flight.” So obviously, he got ended up getting passed over, you know, as a New York Times put it, differed by the specter of racism and politics.

Lily Jamali 

It’s so New York Times lingo right there. The specter.

Kimberly Adams 

The specter of racism as opposed to just racism.

Lily Jamali 

Just racism. You can say the word, New York Times. It doesn’t have to be packaged so much.

Kimberly Adams 

Anyway, he went to space on Sunday morning. “After landing at the end of a flight that lasted 9 minutes and 53 seconds, Mr. Dwight stood on the steps outside of the door of the crew capsule, raised his arms in the air and said, ‘Long time coming.’ He admitted that he had been saying, earlier in the day, that he didn’t need the flight in his life. ‘But I lied,’ he said. Mr. Dwight, 90, was one of six people on board the Blue Origin spacecraft.” I’m looking down here. He’s a sculptor now. And basically, the idea of it. So, “the idea of sending Mr. Dwight to space gained support in 1961, amid a White House campaign to diversify the country’s space program. Mr. Dwight, a charismatic and handsome pilot was then selected for the astronaut training program. He had the support of John F. Kennedy and was championed by the Black press, but numerous obstacles blocked him from reaching space.” And, you know, there are all these other reasons that other people gave for why he wasn’t chosen. But then, after Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, there was less advocacy for him to go to space. He “went on to become a successful restauranteur, real estate developer and a celebrated artist, whose specialty is sculpting prominent Black historical figures. But it wasn’t until 1983 that the United States finally sent a Black astronaut to space”. So, congratulations on your flight, Mr. Dwight.

Lily Jamali 

Congratulations, indeed. And here’s someone who for years actually, as a kid, never saw himself becoming a pilot. Let alone an astronaut until he saw a picture in a newspaper of a Black pilot. And that’s when he realized this could be a potential career path. I was so struck by that reading up on him a little bit. And I have to say I’m on a total, very uncharacteristic, by the way, space kick right now. We at Marketplace Tech recently did a visit to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Yeah, we were checking out the Europa Clipper, which is going to be looking for signs.

Kimberly Adams

You got to wear the white suits.

Lily Jamali

That’s right. We all got suited up. Daniel Shin, the whole crew. And we you know; they’re sending this device, this Europa Clipper, to see if there are signs that one of Jupiter’s moons can support life. And I was just like, wow, I feel like I really needed this visit, you know, just to kind of get out of this. I don’t know just the politics. It kind of weighs on you after a while, and it’s nice to just think about the big picture and then seeing Dwight finally making it up into space. I mean, that just warms my heart.

Kimberly Adams 

It really does. Me too. Well. That’s it for us today. You can join us tomorrow for unfortunately kind of what may end up being grim but who knows? Maybe we’ll turn it into optimism. Our weekly deep dive, Samantha Fields and I will be talking all about Neoliberalism with legal scholar Mehrsa Baradaran who’s out with a new book about the roots of this ideology and how it has shaped or rigged our economy and why she thinks it may be time for something new.

Lily Jamali 

I can’t wait for that interview. I am a total Mehrsa fan girl through and through. I will be listening.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, she’s got a couple of really cool books out already.

Lily Jamali 

Definitely. And she’s out here. I think in Irvine. An hour away.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I think she is. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s program was engineered by Juan Carlos Torrado. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. And our intern is Thalia Menchaca.

Lily Jamali 

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. And Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital.

Kimberly Adams 

Nice timing.